1. Field
The disclosure relates generally to a computer implemented method, a computer program product, and a data processing system for designing an architectural solutions. More specifically, disclosure relates to a computer implemented method, a computer program product, and a data processing system for designing an architectural solution within the constraints of a business analytics and optimization reference architecture and customer information technology environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
As businesses increasingly rely upon computer technology to perform essential functions, data mining is rapidly becoming vital to business success. Specifically, many businesses gather various types of data about the business and/or its customers so that operations can be gauged and optimized. Typically, a business will gather data into a database or the like and then utilize a data mining model to analyze the data.
Unfortunately, many companies are unable to flexibly integrate data analytics into business processes because of the complexity, expense, and incomprehensibility often involved. For example, in terms of infrastructure; companies often must invest substantial resources to build data warehouses, implement servers, hire “mining experts” and information technology staff to use mining software, etc. In terms of processes; companies must then spend considerable time mapping and tuning between data and mining functions. To this extent, business analysts are typically required to possess the mining domain knowledge to choose the best mining algorithm and select appropriate data. In general, there can be more than twenty technically oriented parameters to tune and map. However, in reality, business analysts might know their data and business objectives well, but might not have an in-depth knowledge of the mining algorithm and/or the tuning parameters.
In fact, very few segments in industry have the human and financial resources to deploy sophisticated data analytics solutions such as data mining and scoring. Basically to deploy data mining techniques, companies have two choices: (1) acquire data mining tools and hire an industry specialist to prepare the environment and set up the tool to be used; or (2) hire external consultants to avoid the lack of skills, and large investments in infrastructure companies. Both cases are an extremely expensive proposition for most companies due to the complexity of data integration and the tight binding of complex models to the analytics process.
However, the data analytics collected are closely dependent upon the software products used in the collection process. Matching specific software products to the problems faced by business as well as the type of data collected is often the determining factor in providing useful data analytics.